The Water Dissensus – A Water Alternatives Forum
Whose Peace? Decolonising water diplomacy as a fourth paradigm for justice
By Mohsen Nagheeby
The politics of being cited but not heard
If water diplomacy is to deliver peace through justice, then the field must be fundamentally reframed; otherwise, we should be honest that justice is not the goal. This Forum piece contends that such a reframing requires questioning the field's core assumptions – and argues that decolonising water diplomacy represents a fourth paradigm.
Over the past decade, scholarship on water and peace has grown rapidly and new perspectives have emerged, including justice-oriented work. But this work falls short of achieving justice because it remains focused on peace as the central goal. We must adopt a hydro-decolonial paradigm that does not simply add a justice lens to existing models but interrogates peace itself as a category shaped by global power.
To date, a consistent pattern persists: decolonial work is cited but not integrated. It appears as a signal of pluralism, while its foundational claims – about peace as a project of power, about discursive power, and about the coloniality of diplomacy and governance – remain largely unaddressed.
This produces inclusion without meaningful displacement: decolonial perspectives are acknowledged, but the epistemic furniture of the field – its categories, assumptions and conceptual hierarchies – remains intact. Work on decolonising water diplomacy (e.g., Nagheeby & Amezaga, 2023; Nagheeby et al., 2025) is typically referenced as part of an "emerging justice perspective" yet rarely engaged where it hurts most: the mainstream assumption that peace = cooperation + stability.
These dynamics are not limited to published scholarship. In two recent invitations to contribute to international "water and peace" platforms, the boundaries of acceptable critique were made explicit. In one case, I was asked not to mention decoloniality or refer to ongoing dispossession in Palestine because it was considered "too political". In another, a piece on decolonising water diplomacy funded through a research grant was judged "incompatible" to be published with the host platform because it questioned the liberal peace assumptions the platform itself rests on.
These are not personal grievances. They are symptoms of a structural pattern: decolonial critiques are welcome as long as they do not unsettle the architecture of peace itself. Debates on transboundary waters have largely crystallised around three paradigms. Together, they structure how we think about "water diplomacy":
I.Realist "water war":
From neo-Malthusian warnings to securitisation narratives, realist approaches interpret transboundary water relations through scarcity, strategic rivalry, and national security (e.g., Naff & Matson, 1984; Gleick, 1994). They are a) state-centric, b) zero-sum, and c) framed in terms of risk and threat. Colonial histories, racialised hierarchies and identity-based grievances tend to disappear into the background – if they appear at all.
II.Liberal "water peace":
A second paradigm presents a more reassuring story: cooperation is more common than conflict. Treaties, river basin organisations, and benefit-sharing are framed as pathways to regional stability (e.g., Wolf, 1999; Sadoff & Grey, 2005). Complexity, game theory and nexus approaches add analytical frameworks, but the normative horizon remains liberal peace seen as institutionalised cooperation, predictability and order. Here, peace becomes a technocratic project. It often reflects the foreign policy and security interests of donors, while pushing coloniality, structural injustice and symbolic violence to the margins.
III.Critical–constructivist "conflict–cooperation coexistence":
Critical hydropolitics and coexistence frameworks (e.g., Mirumachi & Allan, 2007; Zeitoun et al., 2020; Warner et al., 2017) have been crucial in showing that: a) conflict and cooperation co-exist, b) power is material, institutional and ideational, and c) discourses and norms matter. Hydro-hegemony (Zeitoun & Warner, 2006) sharpened our understanding of domination and resistance. Nevertheless, much of the work remains focused on interest-oriented conflict transformation and is ultimately tied to a security–peace horizon. Identity is often treated as a secondary factor rather than a constitutive force.
It was only through confronting the limitations of this paradigm that I began to articulate a decolonial reframing of water diplomacy. This shift is an expansion, not a rejection. It builds on critical hydropolitics but moves into terrains that require a conceptual vocabulary beyond what that paradigm offers.
Peace remains the obvious endpoint for all three paradigms, and water diplomacy largely a tool to manage or stabilise relations, rather than to interrogate the histories, violences and exclusions that structure them.
Why the three paradigms cannot address coloniality
The three paradigms have a shared centre of gravity:
a)Security–peace is taken as the obvious horizon, and peace is a neutral, desirable endpoint
b)Interests, especially material ones, are assumed to be the main drivers
c)Knowledge and representation are at best contested descriptively rather than accepted as constitutive.
A decolonial perspective challenges all three. "Water for peace" is not merely a reflection of empirical realities; it is a politically manufactured reality, sustained through discursive power and narrative framing. Narratives of "hotspots", "fragility" or "water wars" do not simply describe; they shape funding priorities, interventions and legitimacy. High-level peace initiatives that marginalise "Global South" voices can generate forms of peace that exist more fully in reports than in lived experience.
Peace, in this sense, often functions as a (neo)colonial governance technology: stabilising uneven arrangements, depoliticising grievances, and declaring unfinished struggles "resolved". This raises a question that rarely appears in mainstream water diplomacy: What and whose peace is being pursued, through which histories, and at what cost?
A fourth paradigm: A hydro-decolonial turn
It is against this backdrop that I locate decolonising water diplomacy as a fourth paradigm – a hydro-decolonial paradigm. It is not simply "more critical", "more normative", or even "more radical"; it reorders the foundations. It proposes a shift from a security–peace orientation to an equity–identity orientation. The starting question is no longer: "How do we secure peace?" but rather,
"Whose equity and identity have been denied, harmed or erased – and how must diplomacy address that?"
In many basins, such as the Nile or the Jordan, identity-based grievances and colonial histories shape hydropolitics as deeply as flows and storage. Stability built on silencing these grievances is not peace; it is pacification. A hydro-decolonial perspective therefore places justice before peace. In a context such as the Jordan basin, can we meaningfully speak of "water peace" if agreements rest on ongoing occupation and dispossession, even if they generate cooperation and infrastructure?
The hydro-decolonial paradigm also prioritizes discursive power, in continuity with critical hydropolitics, by examining how maps, datasets, funding flows, policy narratives and even bibliometric "research agendas" construct water diplomacy as an object of knowledge; however, it brings a sharp focus to the (neo)colonial roles these discursive regimes play. To decolonise water diplomacy is to interrogate these regimes of representation and open space for situated, indigenous and "Global South" epistemologies to define the terms of diplomacy.
A hydro-decolonial paradigm not only adds a justice lens to existing models; it interrogates peace itself as a category shaped by global power, and forces us to confront new questions:
- Should peace remain an unquestioned endpoint in transboundary water governance?
- Can diplomacy ignore identity-based injustice and still claim legitimacy?
- Are "Global South" voices being included, or merely accommodated and domesticated?
If the answer to any of these questions is uncertain, then perhaps a paradigmatic opening is overdue.
If water diplomacy is to remain relevant, it will need more than new data, new models, or new agreements. It will require a reordering of its foundational questions – placing equity alongside interest, identity alongside sovereignty, and justice before peace.
Whether we call this a fourth paradigm or simply a long-delayed reckoning, the debate it provokes is precisely what a Forum like this is meant to host.
References
Gleick P. H. (1994). Water, war & peace in the Middle East. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 36(3), 6–42.
Mirumachi N. & Allan J. A. (2007). Revisiting transboundary water governance: power, conflict cooperation and the political economy. In: Proceedings from CAIWA International Conference on Adaptive and Integrated Water Management: Coping with Scarcity, Basel, Switzerland. Citeseer.
Naff T. & Matson R. (1984). Middle East Water: The Potential for Conflict. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Nagheeby, M., & Amezaga, J. (2023). Decolonising water diplomacy and conflict transformation: from security-peace to equity-identity. Water Policy, 25(8), 835-850.
Nagheeby, M., Mason, O., Dajani, M., & Hussein, H. (2025). Decolonizing water diplomacy for justice: Conceptual reflections and policy implications. Environment and Security, 27538796251362284.
Sadoff, C. W., & Grey, D. (2005). Cooperation on international rivers: A continuum for securing and sharing benefits. Water International, 30(4), 420-427.
Zeitoun M. & Warner J. (2006). Hydro-hegemony – a framework for analysis of trans-boundary water conflicts. Water Policy 8(5), 435–460.
Zeitoun M., Mirumachi N. & Warner J. (2020). Water Conflicts: Analysis for Transformation. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.
Warner, J., Mirumachi, N., Farnum, R. L., Grandi, M., Menga, F., & Zeitoun, M. (2017). Transboundary 'hydro‐hegemony': 10 years later. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, 4(6), e1242.
Wolf A. T. (1999). 'Water wars' and water reality: conflict and cooperation along international waterways. In: Environmental Change, Adaptation, and Security, Lonergan, S.C., (ed). Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 251–265.
Comments 7
This piece powerfully exposes how “peace” in water diplomacy often functions less as a justice project and more as a technology of governance. I would like to extend this argument by suggesting that what operates here is not only pacification (the political calming of resistance), but more fundamentally domestication.
Through what can be called legitimacy engineering, dominant water governance frameworks naturalise hydro-oligarchic rule — a configuration in which control over water is concentrated among states, technocratic institutions, donors, and elite actors, while marginalised communities are symbolically included but structurally excluded from real power. Peace narratives, cooperation discourses, and technocratic vocabularies do not merely stabilise conflict; they actively reproduce legitimacy for unequal hydrosocial orders.
In this sense, peace operates not only as a mechanism of managing dissent, but as a deeper process of subject formation. Resistance is not simply silenced; it is retrained, normalised, and rendered governable. Grievance is translated into “stakeholder engagement,” dispossession into “development,” and injustice into “complexity.” This is not merely pacification — it is domestication of political imagination itself.
Domestication works by reshaping expectations, desires, and horizons of possibility, so that hydro-inequality is no longer perceived as political violence but as a natural condition of governance. What emerges is not just a calm order, but an internalised acceptance of structural injustice, where domination no longer needs overt repression because it has been cognitively and discursively normalised.
From this perspective, “water peace” becomes a legitimising infrastructure for hydro-oligarchic governance:
not a pathway to justice, but a moral technology that stabilises inequality while appearing ethical, neutral, and progressive.
This moves the critique beyond conflict/cooperation and even beyond pacification, toward a deeper question: How does water diplomacy domesticate resistance, identity, and political possibility in order to make unequal orders appear natural, inevitable, and legitimate?
In this sense, a hydro, decolonial paradigm is not only about placing justice before peace
it is about refusing the domestication of dissent, memory, and alternative futures in the name of stability.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. I like how you move from pacification to domestication, especially your framing of peace as a process of legitimacy engineering rather than merely conflict management. As you see, I do use both terms, and I agree that what is at stake is not only pacification, but a deeper domestication of political imagination through the language of peace and cooperation (add negotitation and technical consensus). More specifically, the argument is not that every attempt at stability, or every management of dissent, is domestication. The concern I am raising is more specific: it targets those forms of “peace” that operate, and are even applauded or prized as a model of "success", within liberal (-imperial-capitalist) governance frameworks (e.g., celebrated transboundary arrangements such as in the Nile, the Jordan River, or the US–Canada Columbia basin), where cooperation and stability are mobilised to normalise unequal hydrosocial orders and to depoliticise structural injustice. Among political language which are often vague, justice still remains a particulalry uncomfortable and risky horizon for governance, because it resists being fully engineered into order. And this dimension has been systematically depoliticised within dominant strands of contemporary hydropolitical and water diplomacy thinking.
Thank you for the engagement. I should clarify that this is not a purely theoretical intervention. The argument is grounded in my empirical research on dam construction projects in Iran, specifically the Mandegan River dam and the Khersan 3 dam, which exemplify a pattern that has been repeatedly reproduced across the country.
In these cases, discourses of stability, development, and technical cooperation have been mobilised to pacify contestation and to domesticate political and social imaginaries surrounding water, territory, and livelihood. What is presented as neutral expertise or consensual planning has, in practice, functioned to normalise dispossession, ecological degradation, and unequal hydrosocial relations, while rendering questions of justice politically unintelligible or administratively irrelevant.
It is from this empirical grounding that I approach broader debates on pacification, domestication, and “peace” in water governance. The concern, therefore, is not abstract cooperation per se, but the repeated deployment of these frameworks as technologies of depoliticisation—both in Iran and in other liberal and transboundary governance contexts.
Very good point, and thank you for sharing your experience of how technocratic discourses and domestication operate in practice. Yes, these dynamics are not abstract; they are repeatedly produced through concrete projects, institutions, and planning processes across the world, reflecting a dominant agenda and producing often very similar patterns. This is precisely why domestication should be understood as a broader governance logic that travels across development, security, and cooperation frameworks; not only locally, but also within celebrated “peace-building” arrangements elsewhere. You might also find our recent piece on the Capitalist Black Hole useful, as it speaks directly to how these dominant agendas are produced and normalised: Link
Dans les pays du Maghreb nord-africain, la gouvernance de l’eau demeure dominée par des cadres conceptuels centrés sur la stabilité et la coopération technique, limitant toute perspective de paix réellement juste et durable (Allan, 2001 ; Zeitoun & Warner, 2006). La diplomatie de l’eau s’appuie principalement sur trois paradigmes : le paradigme réaliste des « guerres de l’eau », à dominante sécuritaire et interétatique (Gleick, 1994) ; le paradigme libéral de la « paix par la coopération », technocratique et institutionnel (Wolf, 1999) ; et le paradigme critique, qui reconnaît les rapports de pouvoir mais reste inscrit dans un horizon paix-sécurité (Mirumachi & Allan, 2007). Ces approches peinent à intégrer les héritages coloniaux et les marginalisations persistantes. Face à ces limites, la diplomatie hydro-décoloniale propose de placer la justice, l’équité et l’identité au cœur de l’analyse et de questionner la paix comme produit de rapports de pouvoir, afin d’éviter une paix réduite à la pacification (Nagheeby & Amezaga, 2023 ; Swyngedouw, 2009).
The article gives an important critique of mainstream water diplomacy. It shows that many international water negotiations still reflect unequal power relations. I agree with the author that peace in transboundary water governance cannot be separated from justice and historical inequality.
From a political ecology perspective, water conflicts are not only technical problems about resources. They are also political and environmental struggles connected to power, state interests, and unequal control over nature. Water management is often presented as neutral and scientific, but in reality it can reproduce inequality and marginalization.
In many cases, local communities and Indigenous groups are excluded from decision-making, while states and international organizations control the negotiations. This creates the situation that the author describes as “being cited but not heard”.
A clear example is the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) in Turkey. Although the project is presented as a development project, it has caused serious social and environmental impacts on Kurdish local communities. Many people were displaced, agricultural livelihoods were damaged, and local ecosystems changed. The project also contributed to demographic change and the destruction of historical and cultural sites such as Hasankeyf. This was not only about displacing people, but also about weakening the history and memory of the region.
From this view, large dam projects are not only tools for water management. They can also become tools of territorial control and political power.
I also think the article could discuss more alternatives based on community participation and environmental justice. Decolonising water diplomacy should not only criticize existing systems, but also support more democratic ways of water governance that respect local knowledge and ecological relations.
Overall, the article makes an important contribution by challenging dominant ideas in water governance and showing that justice must be central in any discussion about peace.
The article offers an important and timely critique of how decolonial perspectives are often cited but not meaningfully integrated into the field of water diplomacy. Yet, reading it from the vantage point of North and East Syria reveals an even sharper illustration of the problem the author identifies: the politics of being cited but not heard is not only epistemic — it is material, lived, and violently experienced.
A clear example is the case of the Alouk Water Station, which has been repeatedly used as a tool of coercion by armed groups backed by Turkey since 2019. More than half a million people in Al-Hasakah depend on this station for drinking water, yet water has been cut off dozens of times, often during heatwaves or COVID-19 surges. This is not an abstract “justice issue”; it is a direct form of hydraulic violence, where access to water becomes contingent on political compliance. Despite this, such cases rarely appear in mainstream “water and peace” discussions — precisely because they challenge the liberal assumption that cooperation and stability are the natural horizon of diplomacy.
The same dynamic applies to *Turkey’s upstream control over the Euphrates River. By constructing large dams and restricting flows far below the quantities guaranteed under previous agreements, Turkey has effectively weaponized hydrology. Reduced flows have devastated agriculture, electricity generation, and drinking water supplies in Syria’s northeast. Yet these realities are often sanitized or reframed as “technical disputes” rather than as **expressions of power rooted in historical and geopolitical asymmetries.
These two cases — Alouk and the Euphrates — demonstrate exactly what the article argues: that peace, as framed in dominant paradigms, often functions as a governance technology that stabilizes unequal arrangements rather than addressing the injustices that produce them. They also show how decolonial critiques are welcomed rhetorically but excluded when they expose ongoing dispossession, occupation, or structural violence.
However, while the article powerfully diagnoses the epistemic problem, it stops short of offering practical pathways for what a hydro-decolonial paradigm would look like in action. How can diplomacy confront identity-based injustice? What mechanisms can hold powerful states accountable when they weaponize water? How can affected communities — such as those in Al-Hasakah — be positioned as political agents rather than humanitarian subjects?
Without addressing these questions, the risk is that the hydro-decolonial paradigm remains conceptually compelling but operationally vague. The cases of Alouk and the Euphrates show that decolonizing water diplomacy requires not only reframing peace but also proposing concrete tools for confronting coercive hydro politics.
In this sense, the article opens an essential debate — but the lived realities of communities in North and East Syria remind us that the urgency of this debate is not theoretical. It is a matter of survival.